As the one known as Zliuan, players take up arms as a young warrior whose village lineage has typically been to operate from the shadows and provide hidden support to help dictate the flow of battle. Long before Dynasty Warriors Origins begins, the story has been established that the village from which Ziluan hails has been known for producing a force of change known as the Guardians of Peace. These not-assassins operate from the shadows and do what must be done to keep tyrants from getting out of line and generally guiding the populace towards a particular goal. While this endgame is not immediately known to the player, the way that the Guardians of Peace are woven together with the formation of the three kingdoms that would eventually lead into the tale of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms makes even the most familiar of story beats into something fresh and exciting.
The story of Dynasty Warriors Origins opens with Ziluan as a sort of mercenary for hire with no allegiance to any of the major kingdoms, only in quiet service to the Emperor himself. Along the way, he allies himself with Guan Yu first before becoming introduced to the other key players across Cao Cao, Sun Jian, and Liu Bei’s distinct factions. As is typical for nearly every other Dynasty Warriors title, it’s the defeat of Zhang Jiao and the Yellow Turban Rebellion that truly kicks off the story and establishes the major players as proper musou warriors. The first three (of five total) chapters follow the story from the Yellow Turban Rebellion up through Cao Cao’s rescue of Emperor Xian. It isn’t until the fourth and fifth chapters that players can ally themselves with one of the three factions. Upon completing the main story for the first time, players can enjoy a new difficulty, an additional weapon type, weapon crafting/upgrading systems, and the ability to jump back into the timeline and ally with another faction or perhaps complete some secret mission objectives to divert the story into a ‘What if..?’ scenario and earn progress towards a true ending.
Not even Dynasty Warriors Origins has been able to escape the formulaic approach that the Musou series is known for. As but a simple one-man-wrecking-ball, players will take the field against hundreds, if not thousands, of enemy troops per battlefield, many often dispatched in only a couple of attacks. It’s the sort of power fantasy that players have come to expect from Omega Force. Enemy officers and generals are the ones that offer up a true challenge unless playing on the highest of difficulty levels, and even then, a careful approach to the dodge and parrying mechanics introduced into Dynasty Warriors Origins can turn the tide of battle against even the most acclaimed of generals.
Mission objectives range from taking over one or more bases or defeating key enemy officers for most missions, both story and sidequests. Main story missions offer a fair bit of complexity to mix things up from the main dozen or so missions per playthrough. Usually, these follow more of the canon established by the Romance of the Three Kingdoms mythos, beginning with The Yellow Turban Rebellion and culminating around the Battle of Chibi, where Zhuge Liang’s fire tactics made history in more ways than one. It’s this decisive battle that forms the eventual Three Kingdoms era, so many of the battles and familiar faces that players may recognize from later battles don’t make an appearance. Sorry, but that includes leaving out Meng Huo and his elephants.
Morale and Fortitude are two core mechanics to this latest entry of Dynasty Warriors Origins. Jumping into a fresh battlefield will usually put the player faction at a disadvantage which can be rectified by actions such as defeating an enemy officer or capturing a base. Morale in particular ties directly into how difficult an enemy officer can be to best in combat. When Morale is high for the opposing force, it adds more bars of Fortitude to the enemy’s strength. Typically, the easiest method to defeat an enemy officer is to deplete their fortitude with repeated attacks or perfectly timed parries/dodges and initiate an Assault attack by pressing the Triangle button once fully depleted to do a massive combo attack that can oftentimes defeat lesser enemy officers in a single use. On the flip side, this draws out fights against enemy officers by lessening the amount of damage that they take from regular or musou special attacks and leaving the primary source of damage as these Assault moves.
To break up the monotony and repetition of the hack-and-slash mass battles that the series is known for, Dynasty Warriors Origins gives players a few unique tools that have rarely been seen in prior titles. Midway through the story, regardless of which of the three factions Ziluan allies with, he will gain the ability to command a small squad that accompanies him as if he were a full-fledged officer. These AI units will attack on their own but can also be directly commanded via Tactics. These Tactics operate on time-based cooldowns and allow Ziluan up to three different unique abilities, such as firing a volley of flaming arrows and charging into the enemy line by horseback.
It’s a bit strange to have featured as a major mechanic, especially as Ziluan grows in strength and can dispatch an entire squad of enemy grunt soldiers in a single attack, but Dynasty Warriors Origins bills the established cast of the Three Kingdoms as these all-powerful warlords that can level the battlefield in a single attack. Because of this, they’re treated as some sort of ultimate move and can be swapped to upon filling their respective meter. For a couple of minutes, players can rampage the battlefield as one of their allied officers as an invincible, unstoppable force and culminating in a true musou attack upon completion that can easily rack up enemy KO’s in the hundreds. Many of these officers are the very same that they’ll be fighting alongside during the campaign missions, but there is one fan favorite that’s unlocked upon completing the game for the first time that can be used when replaying any earlier mission.
Rather than simply jumping from one mission to the next with a minor bit of exposition in between as is the series’ tradition, Dynasty Warriors Origins presents an open world for players to run around while keeping the battles themselves confined to separate stages. Koei Tecmo and Omega Force have reverted the changes they brought to players with Dynasty Warriors 9, where battles took place on that open field. As Ziluan runs about the field on foot or by horseback, random stages will pop up across each of the many provinces of China. These lead to much smaller bite-sized missions and can be nigh infinitely repeated, with some maybe lasting 20-30 seconds to rout 100 enemy soldiers. Proving oneself to a province enough times to win their favor usually gives the player a handy upgrade, whether it’s a more potent consumable or a faster steed.
Progression in Dynasty Warriors Origins is a bit of a strange mish-mash of systems intended to see Ziluan slowly grow into a true musou warrior. Rather than earning your standard experience points and leveling up in the traditional fashion, levels are directly tied into a combined weapon proficiency across all weapon types. By securing enough kills with a particular weapon type (others also gain proficiency points, albeit at a slower pace), Ziluan will gain a level that comes with a statistical HP/ATK/DEF bump and one point on his rank which unlocks new skill panels to invest precious skill points once a certain threshold is reached. Ziluan earns one skill point for every hundred enemies slain, so blitzing through one of the repeatable missions and only racking up fifty or sixty kills won’t actually yield him anything.
Because of these two systems operating in tandem to make the player character more powerful, sometimes it’s beneficial to constantly rotate between weapon types and do a few missions with each. In proper musou fashion, enemy officers may randomly drop weapons but can also be purchased from the shop. It isn’t until after wrapping up the 25-30 hour narrative for a single faction that the weapon shop expands their services to transfer the randomly generated skills from one weapon to another, while another option permits fusing weapons of the same type together for permanent stat upgrades on that particular weapon. Maximizing one’s weapon is crucial for the postgame and extreme difficulty options, although players can just as easily finish the main narrative relying on enemy drops or the odd weapon purchase from the town weapon shop.
Dynasty Warriors Origins does away with some storied traditions but establishes the tried-and-true mass combat with an almost cinematic level of attention to detail. Not only is this the most fun I've had with a Dynasty Warriors title in years, but the overarching story woven into the origins of the Three Kingdoms is already one of the more interesting tales of 2025 thus far. Koei Tecmo and Omega Force have shown that there's still room for innovation in the series and while the overall experience has been scaled back compared to earlier Dynasty Warriors entries, Dynasty Warriors Origins excels at every level.
[Editor's note: Dynasty Warriors Origins was reviewed on the PlayStation 5 Pro. Review code was provided by the publisher.]
